Yahoo offers a new maternity leave policy and maybe a Yahoo onesie, too

Yahoo and CEO Marissa Mayer have been unwittingly at the center of the heated debate over women’s rights ever since Mayer took the reigns of the beleaguered Internet giant last year while pregnant with her first child.

Now in the latest go-round, Yahoo confirmed reports today that it is introducing a new family leave policy for its employees, allowing moms and dads to take up to eight weeks off with full pay and benefits to get to know their new child. New moms can also take an additional eight weeks of paid leave after they give birth.

The state of California already requires that large employers like Yahoo allow new moms to take up to four months of leave after the birth of their child, though not entirely with pay.

Yahoo also said it was introducing a new perk called “daily habits reimbursement.” Yahoo will pick up the tab for up to $500 for daily habits such as laundry, house cleaning and childcare for new parents.

And new Yahoo parents — of both a new child or pet — will receive a Yahoo gift package with Yahoo-branded gifts.

Mayer said in a recent post on Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” site that she had planned to take a “glorious six-month maternity leave” while at Google. Then she got the call to become Yahoo’s CEO. With the new job, she realized a long leave couldn’t happen.

“The responsibilities were too big, and time was of the essence — it just wouldn’t be fair to the company, the employees, the board, or the shareholders for me to be in the role, but out for an extended period of time,” she said.

Instead, she took a now famous two-week maternity leave and built a nursery next to her office at Yahoo.

“I’ve come to realize that being a mother makes me a better executive, because motherhood forces prioritization,” she said. “Being a mom gives you so much more clarity on what is important.”

Yahoo, in an effort to boost collaboration, drew more attention earlier this year after banning employees from working from home. The move was seen as a blow to working mothers who needed a more flexible schedule to juggle the demands of their job, home and children. Not everyone could build a nursery next to their office or afford to hire extra help, critics said.

The latest family-leave benefits have been couched not as a response to the work-from-home ban, but as part of the new perks that Yahoo is offering to all its employees. In addition to free food, new smartphones and updated computers, Yahoo said today that it is also allowing employees, every five years, to take up to an eight-week, unpaid sabbatical.